The Cult of Kishpu

by J. J. Shetland

  Paula looked down to see Mengy had her foot on one of the floor stones lower than the others. The penguin looked around and saw nothing suspicious yet. “It’s probably nothing,” she said. “Let’s carry on.”

  They walked on. Then Mengy dropped her torch and pulled Paula back, causing her to drop hers. The elephant pointed her trunk at the guillotine blade landing in front of them. It was large enough to block the whole corridor. Then it was lifted up by itself. Mengy and Paula couldn’t see anything above the blade as it went up; they assumed it was magic. They went forward again, but they were stopped when the blade came back down again. As it went up, they looked further and were shocked to see a thousand guillotine blades coming down and going up on their own. Mengy pointed with her trunk to the floor which was decorated in blood and bones. Even she couldn’t tell if they were the bones of magical or non magical creatures.

  “Can’t you stop the blades, Mengy?” asked Paula.

  Mengy tried using her trunk and fingers, but little purple powers were barely sparkling out. She finally shook her head.

  Paula thought her friend was trying to tell her that her powers needed to recharge. “Great!” she moaned. Then she remembered Lukeson’s training. He didn’t teach anything about getting out of booby traps, but everything he taught them was all part of three main skills for life: relying on themselves and not others, working out things for themselves and never giving up on themselves.

  Paula judged the distance and speed of the guillotine blades and slid forward on her tummy. She believed she would get through quicker that way than walk on her feet. She successfully got past the first blade. Then the second and then the third. The fourth one was coming towards her, but she quickly rolled out of the way. Then she moved past the fifth, sixth and seventh blade.

  Suddenly, she slipped on a slippery rock and slid out of control, heading towards the further blades. Each blade she passed, she was grateful and relived. Then she quickly saw she was heading to a large dark hole under a section of ten guillotine blades. She tried to stop, but she couldn’t and closed her eyes.

  She was so afraid of falling down that dark hole that she didn’t dare to open her eyes, even though she stopped moving. I’ve stopped moving? She bravely opened her eyes and found herself not in darkness but under a flaming torch on the wall and Mengy checking on her. “You teleported us here, Mengy? But you said you were powerless.”

  Mengy pointed to her and jumped up and down in a stroppy way. Then she pointed to her own arm, indicating a watch.

  “I was not impatient, Meng!” Paula protested, as she got back up. “I was trying to –” But she couldn’t think of a convincing story and Mengy gave her an ‘I don’t believe you’ look.

  The penguin sighed and confessed, “All right, I was impatient. But time is wasting and our friends, if they are alive, need our help. In fact, the world needs us more than anyone in its history. Now, come on!”

  As she followed her, Mengy held her trunk up to Paula like a middle human finger behind her back. She always did that to vent her own frustration whenever anyone got either irradiated or impatient with her.

  Mengy and Paula went further down the corridor. The elephant made a trumpeting noise and pointed her trunk to a vast room where light was coming. She and Paula went forward to look into it. Apart from the room’s brightness that contained fifty flaming torches on the stony walls, she saw nothing except bones on the ground and a ten foot stone tower with a hundred steep stone steps. Nothing really special.

  They reached the stone tower nice and slow. They could see no monsters and no booby traps waiting for them. So far, so good.

  Paula ordered Mengy to stay on the ground in case anything happens to her while she walked up the stairs. For a small penguin that didn’t do much physical exercise, only when during one of Lukeson’s training sessions, she managed the hundred steps easily. She reached the top and saw in the middle a giant rock holding a glass jar with blue liquid and no lid. She touched the jar; it felt okay. She picked it up. After checking nothing happened afterwards for fifteen seconds, she started to walk down. Then the tower began to shake violently, causing her and the jar to fall off.

  Seeing her friend fall and the poison falling from the jar, Mengy rubbed her hands together with her purple magic and opened them with a brand new purple glass vial that she produced. She held it out and all of the poison went into it. Every single drop. A cork appearing like magic secured the vial. Mengy held out her left hand and caught Paula. The fallen jar smashed next to them.

  “Thanks, Mengy,” Paula said, as she was lowered down. “And well done for saving the poison.”

  The elephant bowed.

  “Now, let’s teleport out of here and track down this witch,” said Paula.

  After giving the penguin the vial, Mengy took her wing and she closed her eyes. She held her eyes for a long time.

  “Mengy, any time now would be good,” said Paula.

  Mengy closed her eyes again and this time she was grinding her teeth. Then she opened her eyes and sighed.

  Paula groaned. “Don’t tell me you need time to recharge your powers again!”

  Mengy used sign language to explain she had to use her powers to save Paula when she fell down.

  “Well, how the hell was I to know the tower was going to fall down?” the penguin snapped.

  Then they heard something. They looked down to the rocky floor and saw the bones rolling … on their own! Paula tried to see if there was a wind moving around them, but there was none of the sort at where they were. The air around them was still. There were also no magic lights or stones around.

  Paula gasped as she saw a human leg bone rising up in the air. “Mengy, what are you doing?”

  Mengy turned her around and pointed with her trunk to a pile of bones. They were moving up in the air and connecting with each other.

  “This isn’t your doing, is it?” Paula said.

  Mengy shook her head. Then she and her penguin friend saw the piles of bones were skeletons that had not only finished rebuilding themselves, but were charging for them with Maya swords and shields. They saw that it wasn’t just a few skeletons warriors; there were hundreds more all over the room.

  “You got any magic to blast them away, Mengy?” asked Paula.

  Mengy reached her arms out, but nothing was coming out. She and Paula looked for swords, spears and shields, but they were all taken by the magical skeletons. Then Mengy tried to listen out for something. Paula thought the elephant was daft to try to listen while skeleton armies were going to attack them, but as she couldn’t find anything to defend herself with, she tried to join in with Mengy’s listening. She managed to hear a little sound. It was getting louder and quicker every next second went by.

  A water eruption came out of the tower like a volcano, knocking it down. It started to spread and rise very quickly.

  “Ah, great idea, Mengy!” Paula praised. “This is one of the very rare times you actually outwitted me.”

  But Mengy just shook her head and pointed to the water hole. Out appeared James and Chris.

  “Well, come on!” cried James.

  Still unsure about what was happening, Mengy and Paula quickly jumped into the hole. They followed the mermen into underwater tunnel and it led them to the Atlantic Ocean.

  * * *

  “Then once we were out in the Atlantic Ocean,” said James, “Paula scanned the poison to track down to confirm that Petunia was that witch. Then Mengy had enough powers to teleport us to over here.”

  “Then we saw you guys at the mercy of Petunia and her army,” Paula said. “Mengy used her powers to disguise us as her minions and then we gave the witch the magic poison.”

  Everyone applauded.

  Remembering it affected Rachael who wasn’t magical, Lukeson ordered Paula to make sure G.C.A. never forgets that magic poison can kill non magical creatures as well as the magical creatures.

  “Three questions, Chris, James,” said Stu Pot. “On
e: If you guys were here the whole time, why weren’t you helping us fight? Two: How did you guys get into the tunnel without Mengy teleporting you? And three: if the moving skeletons escaped with you, are they unleashed in the world?”

  “Well, in answer to the second question,” said Chris, “after we saved Mengy and Paula from drowning, Mengy was the first one to wake up. Before she did all the rowing, she gave me one of her purple orbs. Using her magical mind telepathic communication, she explained it would glow red if she was in danger and, when it did glow red, I would have to throw it down to teleport me and James to help them. And the orb was also how we created the hole under the tower and caused it to knock down.”

  “My point of view still hasn’t changed, Mengy,” Paula said. “You still outwitted me back with the skeletons.”

  Mengy bowed her head.

  “And you forgot when we were worried about them not coming back?” James teased Chris.

  “I wasn’t worried,” his friend protested. “I just wanted to see how you look when you worry and cry. You look so sweet.”

  James looked at the others who giggling in a friendly teasing way, but he still felt embarrassed. Then he cleared his throat. “As for question one, when Mengy teleported us here, we were stuck up a tree with no weapons. And it’s takes ages for a merman to climb down a tree.”

  “I bet you guys beat the record of every tree-toed sloth of climbing trees down slowly,” Rustom joked.

  Lukeson was about to yell at Rustom for insulting the mermen, but they were actually laughing at it. So he allowed the G.C.A. soldiers and himself to join them and Louise in the laughing.

  “And as for question three,” Paula said, “we saw the skeleton bones in the sea. They were motionless. We used James’s mer-phone and, according to it, there was no life in them anymore. I assumed it was there was some power source that caused them to come to life but have stopped when they got further away from it.”

  “Now that we’ve stopped the Cult of Kishpu, we can go home now, right, sir?” asked Stu Pot.

  “Well, you guys can go home,” said Lukeson. “But I need to talk to the kings of the sea and the sky in order to renegotiate our –”

  “Sergeant Lukeson! Sergeant Lukeson!”

  Everyone turned around to see a chipmunk, a fox and a tiger wearing Canadian Army uniforms with G.C.A. badges running towards them. They stopped and saluted.

  “What’s the problem?” Lukeson asked.

  “G.C.A. has been spotted by the humans, sir,” the female chipmunk replied. “The remaining world leaders and their remaining soldiers are attacking our Victoria base.”

  “Captain Tugson arrived here and tried to talk some sense to the humans,” the fox said, “but negotiations have failed and the war for Global Creature Alliance has begun.”

  Lukeson sighed. All his fears were coming true. All of his hard work and dedication to protect innocent animal lives was finally going down the drain. He knew that his own life could be over if he and his friends went down there to confront and reason with the world leaders, but he wasn’t going to let the animals die for the sake of humanity’s fear, especially when they did humanity no harm. “All right, take us to your base.”

  The Canadian soldiers took Lukeson and his soldiers and allies from the sky and the sea to a massive beautiful pacific silver fir. The mermen could follow them easily because they were wearing the jet-packs that Stu Pot and Rustom wore when they left the Sky Capital to find Larissa in the Everglades.

  The tiger took a piece of bark off and typed on the wooden keypad. The middle of the tree started to open up like a double door. Everyone headed down the wooden stairs in darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  The vast human army led by the remaining world leaders were marching to the very few animals left in the sustainable G.C.A. city under Victoria, British Columbia. The flames were as high as the metal columns supporting the city. They were causing the log buildings – the animals’ homes, business buildings, cafes and restaurants – to fall down very quickly. Not to mention the growing areas for the animals’ food were getting torn apart by the humans’ powerful military tanks.

  The USA President, an African-American lady in a suit, held a microphone. “This is your last chance to surrender to us! All of your lives will be spared!”

  “Over our dead arses, Madam President!” Tugson yelled.

  Then suddenly every gun stopped firing and everyone froze like statues. No arm or leg of any single creature could move with the exceptions of Sergeant Rhys Lukeson, Private Stuart Potter, Private Katherine Toronto, Private Huian Meng, Mer-Privates Chris Colonna and James Orlan, Private Paula Guzman and her nephew and niece Pedro and Larissa, Rafig Rustom and finally Princess Louise of the Skies.

  Lukeson turned to Squad J. “You guys get these fires out, pronto!”

  “Yes, sir,” Squad J said at once. They dashed off with Chris and James joining them.

  Louise was by Lukeson’s side as he approached Captain Tugson and the Canadian corporals.

  “How did this happen, Captain Tugson?” Lukeson asked.

  Tugson turned to the corporals. “Tell him, Glass.”

  After checking she move her lips, Glass began to speak. “We were barely spotted by the humans three days ago and Captain Tugson has been staying here for two days in case of an emergency. Nothing had happened until eighteen hours ago where we found a deceased woman with wings that fell from no one knows where and her skull was splattered.”

  “Where did you put this woman?” Louise asked.

  “Well, Ma’am,” said Murray. “We put her in the morgue to hide her from –”

  “Can it, Murray,” said Tugson. “Why are you giving our private details to a total stranger?”

  “It’s not like I’m telling her I have my whole body waxed,” Glass protested. “Including my nuts and my beard. I even –”

  “This is Princess Louise of the Skies, gentlemen,” Lukeson told the officers. “And the deceased woman you have locked up is her older sister.”

  Tugson gulped. “Sorry, Your Highness. Sorry for your loss and the embarrassment.”

  “That’s all right,” said Louise.

  “So we sent some of our golden moles to check out her sister and remove her from the scene to protect our location,” Glass continued, “but some human soldiers spotted the moles and tracked them to Victoria Wooden Underground here.”

  “Victoria Wooden Underground?” Louise said.

  “Yeah, so no one gets confused with the Victoria Underground one under London,” Corporal Glass explained. “Then the humans broke into here and tried to arrest us. When we resisted, they tried to kill us. We fought until you showed up.”

  “We tried to talk to them,” said Tugson. “But they wouldn’t listen to us.”

  “Who would listen to you?” Rustom said, holding a small plastic hosepipe that was reaching out of his back.

  “Explain what you mean, Rustom,” Lukeson ordered sternly.

  “I meant, after all the whole world’s been through, how would humans take well to this?”

  “Aye, good point,” agreed Stu Pot, holding a fire extinguisher.

  Lukeson saw that Squad J and the mermen were panting and holding fire extinguishers and water guns. He was pleased to see the city was no longer in flames. “Take a breather,” he said.

  Then he walked forward and approached the President of the United States. Then he turned to Mengy. “Release everyone, Meng.”

  The G.C.A. soldiers and citizens were surprised and confused to hear him order the humans to be freed. He was the most trusted G.C.A. member ever, but they were wondering how he could negotiate with the most uneasy species and their world leaders for their lives. They feared for his failure.

  “Release them, Meng,” Lukeson repeated. “And, G.C.A. soldiers, lower your weapons.”

  The President of the United States of America was finally able to move. So was everyone else. The human soldiers aimed their guns at Lukeson, but the
USA President gave them a halt order.

  “I am Sergeant Rhys Lukeson, Madam President,” the sergeant introduced himself. “I’m one of the co-founders and the third in command of this organisation called Global Creature Alliance. The only two above me is Lieutenant Robert Skipton back at our HQ in Blackpool and Captain Matthew Tugson over there.”

  Tugson waved to her.

  “We will happily show you the place and what we do to show you we are no threat to anyone,” Lukeson went on, “but you must promise that neither you nor any other human will attack us and all of you will listen to us.”

  “I don’t know anything about this, Sergeant,” said the USA President. “All I know is that you have built an illegal organization hiding something from the rest of the world, even from your government.”

  “Not true, Madam President!”

  Lukeson and the President turned to face a tall, slim, pale lady with long ginger hair and sparkling blue eyes wearing a suit. She approached towards them and produced her ID badge. “Helen Pepper, Head of the Green Party of England and Wales.”

  “What has the head of a UK political party got to do with this?” asked the US President.

  “I’m their benefactor,” Helen said. “The animals’ homes, food and businesses all comes from what I earn.”

  “Helen!”

  Everyone saw two men in suits approaching Helen. One old and bald wearing a blue tie was the UK Prime Minister and the other who had grey hair and was wearing another blue tie was his Ministry for Defence. Helen greeted both men.

  “Helen, what are you doing?” demanded Mr. Pepper.

  “I am trying to save the lives of all these animals,” said Helen.

  “Who gave you the right to do all this, Miss Pepper?” asked the Prime Minister.

  “Dad,” said Helen. “He made this organisation entirely legal.”

  “I did not!” her dad protested.

  His daughter got out some paperwork and gave it to him to read.